Abstract: A radio communication network comprising a plurality of communication terminals and a plurality of repeaters intermediate the communication terminals, with wayside communication paths being established between pairs of the repeaters via two radio channels carrying the same data. Protection switching of a wayside path is determined, in a preferred embodiment, by using one common wayside path to calculate the FEC (Forward Error Correction) and PEC (Parity Error Count). Switching to the better of said two channels is effected if FEC or PEC exceed predetermined thresholds. The common wayside path is defined as follows: (a) &Sgr; wayside A path+&Sgr; wayside B path −&Sgr; (wayside A ||wayside B), if waysides A and B are overlapped (||indicates overlapped portions of the two parameters.) (b) wayside A path OR wayside B path, if waysides A and B are not overlapped.